I
KING DINIS
(1261-1325)
Co’ este o reino prospero florece.
Camões, Os Lusiadas.
Um Dinis que ha de admirar o mundo.
Antonio de Sousa de Macedo, Ulyssippo.
When Henry of the French House of Burgundy became Count of Portugal in 1095 he merely held a province in fealty to the King of Leon, but by his son, the great Affonso I’s victories over the Moors it almost automatically became an independent kingdom. The second king, Sancho I, who has so many points of resemblance to King Dinis, further established the new realm, and he and his successors continued to wrest territory from the Moors. In the reign of the fifth king, Dinis’ father, Affonso III, the conquest of Algarve was completed, and the only remaining difficulty was the claim of the kings of Castille to this region.
Dinis, born on October 9, 1261, was but a few years old when he was sent to Seville to win the consent of his mother’s father, the celebrated Alfonso the Learned, to waive his right to the latest Portuguese conquest. As the shrewd Affonso III had foreseen, he proved a successful diplomatist. Alfonso X, enchanted with the grave, courtly bearing of his little grandson, knighted him and sent him home with all his requests granted.
Thus it came about that when Dinis, to whom his father had given a separate household but a few months before, ascended the throne at the age of seventeen, he was the first king to begin to reign over Portugal with its modern boundaries, from the River Minho to Faro. Two centuries of great deeds had achieved this result—two more were to pass before Spain was likewise entirely free of the Moorish invader—and Dinis now in a reign of half a century (1279-1325) saw to it that the heroism and sacrifices of his ancestors had not been in vain.
His tutor had been a Frenchman, Ébrard de Cahors, who now became Bishop of Coimbra, and the fame of his grandfather Alfonso X was spread through the whole Peninsula. But, young as he was, Dinis at once made it clear that he intended to rule as the national King of Portugal and had resolution enough to withstand the Castilian influence of his mother and Alfonso X. His first care was to acquaint himself thoroughly with his kingdom, and he spent the great part of the first year of his reign in visiting the country, paying especial attention to the still almost deserted region of Alentejo.
But the first years of his reign were not entirely peaceful, for his younger brother Affonso laid claim to the throne. Dinis was born before the Pope had legitimised Affonso III’s second marriage; Affonso, two years his junior, afterwards: hence the partisans of the latter affected to consider Dinis illegitimate. The dispute was scarcely settled when Dinis married Isabel, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon, who proved so efficacious a mediator in the even more serious troubles at the end of his reign, and, after sharing his throne for forty-three years, is still venerated as the Queen-Saint of Portugal.
In his differences with Castile, Dinis was successful, both in peace and war, and it was a tribute to his character and authority that he was chosen as arbitrator between the claims of the kings of Castille and Aragon. At home he was confronted by a powerful secular clergy, by the excessive and growing wealth of the religious orders, and by an overweening nobility, while his newly conquered kingdom urgently required hands to till it and walls and castles for its defence. Dinis dealt with all these problems in a spirit of equal wisdom and firmness, upholding the rights of the throne and the rights of the people till he had welded a scattered crowd of individuals into a nation.